The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the societyβs values, can force it to change.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fiction immerses us in experiences akin to memories rather than real events.
In this quote, Samuel R. Delany emphasizes that while reading fiction can deeply engage us and evoke strong emotions, the experiences we gain from it are not the same as those derived from real-life occurrences. Instead, they resemble memories, highlighting the unique way that stories shape our thoughts and feelings through imaginative engagement rather than direct experience.
Themes
FictionMemoryExperienceReadingStories
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion about the impact of literature.
More from Samuel R. Delany
All quotes βHow we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who we are politically, historically, culturally.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
I spend a lot of time thinking, if not daydreaming. People think of me as a genre writer, and a genre writer is supposed to be prolific. Since that's how people perceive me, they have to say I'm prolific. But I don't find that either complimentary or accurate.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
Similar quotes
The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.
Italo CalvinoRead
Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.
Italo CalvinoRead
I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further.
Maggie StiefvaterRead
The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.
Nikki GiovanniRead
For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history.
Carlos FuentesRead